Joshua Seemu­n­gal

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

joshua.seemu­n­gal@guardian.co.tt

Amidst the strug­gles many face, if there is one place ca­pa­ble of reignit­ing a dim­ming Yule­tide spark, it is the spir­i­tu­al home of Tri­ni Christ­mas—Paramin.

That is why every year, in De­cem­ber, thou­sands of peo­ple from across the coun­try brave the com­mu­ni­ty’s ver­ti­go-in­duc­ing roads to at­tend the an­nu­al Parang on D Hills Fes­ti­val at the John Mad­er Recre­ation Ground.

This year’s edi­tion, on De­cem­ber 15, was again well-at­tend­ed, with pa­trons feast­ing on sweet parang, de­lec­table del­i­ca­cies and fes­tive warmth.

In cel­e­bra­tion of the event’s suc­cess, MP for Diego Mar­tin North/East Colm Im­bert took to X (for­mer­ly Twit­ter) claim­ing it was the biggest one in its 14 years.

A young man from Paramin, Nathaniel Rop­er saw Min­is­ter Im­bert’s post as an op­por­tu­ni­ty to raise aware­ness of a long-stand­ing is­sue fac­ing the com­mu­ni­ty. Res­i­dents, Rop­er claimed, can­not use the John Mad­er Recre­ation Ground.

Rop­er was blocked by Min­is­ter Im­bert’s Twit­ter ac­count short­ly af­ter.

Guardian Me­dia went up to Paramin last week to de­ter­mine if Rop­er’s claims were true.

Mis­com­mu­ni­ca­tion be­tween res­i­dents and those re­spon­si­ble for the ground ap­peared ram­pant as we got two very dif­fer­ent ver­sions of the sto­ry.

Sev­er­al Paramin res­i­dents firm­ly be­lieve the ground was not re­opened. Those work­ing with Im­bert, how­ev­er, said work was com­plet­ed and the ground hand­ed back to the Mar­aval Ro­man Catholic Parish, which man­ages and owns the field.

For many decades and across sev­er­al gen­er­a­tions, the John Mad­er Recre­ation­al Ground—as it was re­cent­ly re­named—was the sport­ing and cul­tur­al hub of the com­mu­ni­ty. The ground is steeped in leg­end, with el­der­ly res­i­dents re­call­ing tales of a bizarre dis­pute over a don­key’s bur­ial there and close­ly-fought foot­ball and rounders games.

“I’ve lived in Paramin in my en­tire life and grow­ing up be­fore they re­fur­bished the ground and put the pavil­ion and all of that stuff, it was a wide­ly used area. Every day you would see the ground full of peo­ple. Sports was a sta­ple in the com­mu­ni­ty and the com­mu­ni­ty of Paramin is so close-knit that when you used to see peo­ple on the ground, peo­ple would hur­ry to go and play. It was like every­body knew every­body and every­body was ex­cit­ed to go down to the ground in the evenings and that kind of stuff.

“Then they came and said they are re­fur­bish­ing the ground and they are re­nam­ing it. Every­body was hap­py—they said ok, cool. Thanks. No­body asked for it, but I guess that was al­so in part be­cause they al­ways had the parang on the ground. When they re­fur­bished it, they put up a stage and they put this pavil­ion. That’s the first thing every­body was con­cerned about,” Rop­er, in his ear­ly 20s, said.

Sev­en years af­ter work be­gan, Rop­er said, the John Mad­er Recre­ation Ground is yet to be of­fi­cial­ly opened. “They asked us not to go on the ground while the grass was grow­ing, and every­body oblig­ed. When they found that the grass was grown enough, some peo­ple start­ed to play. We were told that’s not ok, they haven’t opened the ground. So they said un­til they open the ground prop­er­ly, no­body is play­ing on it, then, at some point, peo­ple got fed up and just put their goal­posts on the ground. They came back to the goal­posts be­ing cut. They said no­body is al­lowed to use the ground.

“The res­i­dents have not been able to use the ground but every year—bar­ring the COVID years—there is parang every year with­out fail on that same ground. They re­fur­bish the ground strict­ly for parang, that’s what I would say, and ever since then–I am a man now and then I was a boy and it’s still the same. Sev­en years we can’t use the ground be­cause the ground can’t be opened yet? No­body wants to open it? That’s un­fair,” the for­mer Fa­ti­ma Col­lege stu­dent said.

Rop­er said the is­sue was dis­cussed by vil­lagers at the re­cent parang fes­ti­val, with many com­ing to the con­sen­sus that some­thing need­ed to be done. His fa­ther host­ed a foot­ball camp on the field for many years and ever since it was forced to stop, young men have asked him re­peat­ed­ly when it will restart. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, he can­not give them an an­swer.

“And that’s what prompt­ed me to speak up about it when I saw the tweet by the min­is­ter about how suc­cess­ful it was. Yes, it’s very suc­cess­ful for you, but for the peo­ple who are liv­ing here, it’s kind of be­com­ing a lit­tle bit of a nui­sance be­cause I guess it’s a big at­trac­tion–once a year–but what is hap­pen­ing for the oth­er 364 days? To hell with Paramin?

“I ex­pect­ed him to block me be­cause that’s what he does when­ev­er some­body shares a neg­a­tive on his pos­i­tive. I guess I kind of hoped it would have gone dif­fer­ent­ly.

“It’s hard to see that the chil­dren are out of school right now and no­body can use the ground. What are the chil­dren sup­posed to do when they are out of school? I can tell you—they are lim­ing. They are on the block now. Chil­dren 13, 14, and 15 years old on the block. These youth are start­ing to get in­to this crime thing be­cause you are see­ing that the ones who don’t have a pos­i­tive in­flu­ence–who are lim­ing on evenings and this kind of thing–are hang­ing with the wrong crowd.

“That nev­er come to Paramin be­fore. It’s noth­ing about mu­sic. It’s just that they don’t have any oth­er way to ex­press them­selves and that’s the peo­ple who will ac­cept them when they have noth­ing to do … All 4 o’clock or 5 o’clock, men used to be sweat­ing on the ground, but now you will catch them by the bar lim­ing.”

Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the John Mad­er Recre­ation Ground on Tues­day morn­ing. With a breath­tak­ing van­tage point of west Trinidad and Port-of-Spain, the ground, lo­cat­ed a short walk down a hill from the Our La­dy of Guade­loupe Catholic Church, had new lights, a new pavil­ion and a new stage area. Some scaf­fold­ing from the re­cent parang fes­ti­val was still erect­ed. The grass was pret­ty well man­i­cured apart from a few scat­tered brown patch­es. The ground’s front gate was un­locked and open, yet not a sin­gle per­son was there.

Ac­cord­ing to a life-long res­i­dent, a few young men re­cent­ly re­sumed play­ing foot­ball on the ground, but they are ‘tak­ing a chance’.

“Right now, the ground is still un­der re­pairs be­cause the grass is not catch­ing. Boy, they do some work on that ground and I don’t think that ground ever open, with min­is­ters open­ing it. They are plant­i­ng over the grass on the ground, but what the youths are say­ing is that the ground didn’t fin­ish, yet still you’ll come and use it for the parang,” the res­i­dent in his late 50s said. An­oth­er res­i­dent who lives near the ground, a moth­er in her 30s, said most youths are not sure if they can use the field or not.

“The youths are tak­ing a chance be­cause the guy re­spon­si­ble for it some­times would act up and say they have to wait for the open­ing. Then, they would com­plain about the grass, but for the parang, they ac­tu­al­ly put ma­te­r­i­al on the grass, so they won’t mash up the grass. But to say they had an of­fi­cial open­ing, where they say it is open to the com­mu­ni­ty for a com­mu­ni­ty event, no. It’s been a while, ‘cause they fix that ground about a year now,” she said.

They all ex­pressed hope that ac­tion will be tak­en, so that res­i­dents can, once again, ben­e­fit as in­tend­ed when built by the com­mu­ni­ty decades ago.

Calls to Im­bert’s phone went unan­swered, while What­sApp mes­sages re­ceived one tick. At­tempts to con­tact the MP’s of­fice were un­suc­cess­ful, while en­quiries to the Rur­al De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny of Trinidad and To­ba­go, the en­ti­ty re­spon­si­ble for the re­fur­bish­ment project, were not ac­knowl­edged.

Im­bert’s team tell a dif­fer­ent sto­ry

Peo­ple who work with Im­bert, how­ev­er, told a dif­fer­ent sto­ry.

Ac­cord­ing to them, work on the ground be­gan short­ly be­fore Car­ni­val 2020 and was done to con­struct a new stand, as well as re­pair in­fra­struc­ture that, they said, was left to di­lap­i­dat­ed un­der the PP gov­ern­ment. Ad­mit­ting there were some de­lays as a re­sult of fund­ing is­sues, they said con­struc­tion stopped for two years be­cause of COVID-19 reg­u­la­tions but is com­plete apart from new swings and slides, which are ex­pect­ed soon.

The ground, they said, was hand­ed back over to the lo­cal parish. They added that there would not be an of­fi­cial open­ing be­cause there was al­ready a re­nam­ing cer­e­mo­ny in 2009. The sources said the ground was not open to the gen­er­al pub­lic per se be­cause of its prox­im­i­ty to the Our La­dy of Guadalupe Ro­man Catholic Church. They said the land was owned by the church and there is no state land in Paramin to ac­com­mo­date an­oth­er recre­ation­al ground.